Study: Almost All of America’s Favorite Songs Are About Sex

Surprise, surprise. A study shows that Americans like their music sexy.

The study analyzed the top-selling country, pop and R&B songs in 2009, for lyrics that had “reproductive messages” — otherwise known as references to sex and its consequences. And, perhaps unsurprisingly to Katy Perry and LMFAO fans, the vast majority of those best-selling songs had sexy references.

“Approximately 92% of the 174 songs that made it into the [Billboard] Top 10 in 2009 contained reproductive messages,” reports Dawn R. Hobbs, SUNY Albany psychology professor and lead author of the study, in Evolutionary Psychology.

By evaluating whether songs made reference to one or more of 18 different sexually-themed categories, from “genitalia” to “infidelity” to “mate guarding,” the study found that the best-selling songs had “an average of 10.49 sex-related phrases per song”, according to the The Atlantic Wire.